Author
Topic: Craig's Neapolitan Garage (Read 214003 times)

I'm starting to like 60%. The dough is certainly easier to work with than 62.5, and if you let it rise enough, every bit as tender if not more so. Thanks to a football game that was an hour late, the oven was not quite as hot as I would have liked, but the pies came out pretty good nonetheless. About 80 seconds. My wife asked for the fig and pork confit pie a little less done. It was probably just a bit over 60.

bump Was there some confusion about my question? I'm curious how much wood it takes to fire up an oven like yours from cold.

Thanks,

Mal

I'm sorry Mal, I didn't see it the first time. You can get it hot enough to bake a sub 90-second pie in 3-4 hours, but you will have very uneven, unbalanced heat - most of which will be coming from the fire. For a reasonably balanced heat and a 60 second pie, it takes a good 10 hours to get it hot enough. More is better. Pies made the next day starting with a 450F oven and heating for another 6 hours are better yet. There is no comparison, IMO, between the appearance of pies from a hot oven, and pies coming for a hot oven that is fully saturated with heat.

enter8

I'm sorry Mal, I didn't see it the first time. You can get it hot enough to bake a sub 90-second pie in 3-4 hours, but you will have very uneven, unbalanced heat - most of which will be coming from the fire. For a reasonably balanced heat and a 60 second pie, it takes a good 10 hours to get it hot enough. More is better. Pies made the next day starting with a 450F oven and heating for another 6 hours are better yet. There is no comparison, IMO, between the appearance of pies from a hot oven, and pies coming for a hot oven that is fully saturated with heat.

Craig

Ah no worries. Thanks for the reply. I had no idea it took that long to get an oven "saturated". Definitely given me pause regarding any plans to go the WFO route. Your oven is a commercial neapolitan, am I right? I wonder if a smaller "domestic" oven would reach saturation point sooner.

Ah no worries. Thanks for the reply. I had no idea it took that long to get an oven "saturated". Definitely given me pause regarding any plans to go the WFO route. Your oven is a commercial neapolitan, am I right? I wonder if a smaller "domestic" oven would reach saturation point sooner.

Yes, mine is. A smaller, lower mass oven would take only a fraction of the time to heat - in some cases perhaps not much more than an hour. One of the trade-offs is less balanced heat. Though that is not to say you can't bake a beautiful pie in a smaller oven.

I had a guest pizzaiolo help me last night. She did very well for only her second time behind my oven. The dough was 60%HR again this week. The pie with the prosciutto was mozzarella di bufala and fig and lemon preserves with prosciutto and saba added post bake. Very tasty. Fresh shucked clams on the two clam pies. It's a good thing I got 5# as I think I ate a third of them when I was shucking. K Milbrandt Syrah 2010.

Despite another long junior football excursion, I was able to get the oven up to a proper temp. It really seems to like around 875F on the floor and 950F on the walls farthest from the fire. The penalty for not using the oven every day is that I have to run a larger fire than I would like to maintain the temp as the walls and floors are not fully saturated resulting in slightly unbalanced heat, but not too bad.